Professor Rik Brydson appointed as RMS President
The Royal Microscopical Society (RMS) is very pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Rik Brydson as its new President.
Rik, who is based at the Bragg Centre for Materials Research (IMR) and the School of Chemical and Process Engineering at the University of Leeds, takes on the role from Professor Peter O’Toole who has stepped down following the completion of his three-year term of office.
Rik currently heads the NanoCharacterisation group based around the Leeds Electron Microscopy and Spectroscopy (LEMAS) centre which is shared between Materials and Earth Sciences and also acts as an EPSRC facility for external UK researchers.
He has more than 35 years’ research experience in nanomaterials characterisation and has managed extensive national and international collaborations - including one of the founding members and consortium leaders of the UK National Facility for Aberration corrected Electron Microscopy, SuperSTEM at Daresbury.
Rik said: "It really is a great honour to become President of the RMS – which is the oldest microscopy society in the world. Hopefully I won’t disappoint - too much! The Society has made some great strides under Peter’s leadership over the past few years and I look forward to working with all our committees and wider membership to build on that success throughout my time as President.”
He added: “Of course, my job will be made much easier by the highly skilled and pro-active team of dedicated staff associated with the RMS. The proficiency of this team was recently evidenced by the highly successful organisation of the International Microscopy Congress in Liverpool which attracted over 3,000 delegates from almost 50 different countries and included around 120 exhibitors.
Rik has a long association with the RMS, having served for several years on the RMS Council and as the Honorary Secretary for the Physical Sciences. He has also been a member of the Management Board of the European Microscopy Society.
Among his many publications, Rik has written an RMS Handbook on Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy (Bios /Taylor and Francis 2001) and co-written a book on “Nanoscale Science and Technology" (Wiley 2005). He also edited a recent RMS book on Analytical Aberration-corrected Transmission Electron Microscopy with Wiley and has contributed a number of other chapters in specialist books on electron microscopy covering Physics, Chemistry and Engineering. In recent years his research interests have focused on applying high spatial resolution characterisation methods (particularly TEM and EELS) to the nanochemical analysis of softer, more radiation sensitive materials.